Midst the extraordinary wonder of it all is the daily toil of a bygone age interfacing with the intricate social complexity of a community which has honed its ways over the same centuries in which the craftsmen have unhurriedly practiced their trades – potters, brass and gold workers, woodcarvers, mask-makers and masons all. However not all the workmanship is religious, the windows and doorways of fine houses of once prosperous traders bare witness to a vibrant exotic past as in Kipling’s line:   ’and the wildest dreams of Kew are the facts of Kathmandu’.

DAY 3 – Bhaktapur – Patan - Nuwakot  (O/N The Famous Farm).  Morning visit to Patan’s Durbar Square and Museum plus Tibetan carpet weaving centre, followed by lunch in Patan Square, before continuing to Nuwakot. 
And so to Patan. Although these days it is part of the sprawl of the Kathmandu conurbation, it has a history of its own not least as the centre of Sanskrit learning and thus its oft used Sanskrit name of Lalitpur (City of Beauty). Like Bhaktapur, Patan warrants exploration on foot though here all is easily encompassed within the Durbar Square. 

Sanskrit really helps explain Patan while Patan informs on this archaic Aryan language which was both the medium of ancient Hindu Vedas (texts) and of the propagation of Buddhist teachings in the 3rd Century BC arriving from the Ganges along the lines of communication of the emperor Ashoka.  Four Ashok columns still stand at the corners of the square.

The influences are then from every age since, perhaps culminating in the 12th to 16th Century era of the Mallas and their extraordinarily creative Newar civilization. Everywhere centred around the square are noble structures both royal and religious which highlight the Hindu pantheon, mainly of Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva.  Here too is an excellent museum of truly international standard with some superb artefacts from both Buddhist and Hindu traditions leaving you in no doubt as to the glories of the past and well-informed as to the span of civilisations that have flourished and competed here in the Himalayas. 

Ours is now a mountainous drive north out of The Valley towards the central Himalayan region of the Langtang Himal. We climb to 2,000m and, beyond the valley rim, we enter a different world – the world of breathtaking views and of the sights and sounds of rural Nepal . . .described by someone as ‘from soaring summits to day-old chicks’.

Without doubt Nepal’s more recent heritage – or at least the birth of Nepal’s modern age - is encapsulated here in a tiny mountain fastness as undiscovered as the proverbial jewel. This is the fort, the palace, the temple at Nuwakot and it is where the unifier of Nepal, Prithvi Narayan Shah, in 1769 established his Gorkha army to bear down on the Kathmandu Valley and, one-by-one, to pick off the small principalities that constantly squabbled there.

Nuwakot’s saddle-back position provides impressive defensives in three directions sweeping down to river valleys far below while its imposing towers, seen from any approach, are menace enough to deter any malicious force.

Just beyond, on the south-facing hillside, backed by the 7,000m Langtang Himal, is The Famous Farm. This is surely everyman’s pastoral idyll and restorative ‘fix’. (BD)

DAY 4  - Nuwakot – Bandipur (O/N Old Inn – NB bathrooms unattached).  Nuwakot Historic Fort and Palace.  Late morning departure to Trisuli Centre and ‘Big Fig’ for lunch, before arriving in Bandipur, for dinner and an initial introduction to the locality. 
After visiting the fortifications, the six story palace and the temple to Shiva with its gilt roof and crumbling columns, we take the back-way that follows the Trisuli river down-stream towards the lowlands and on into the middle hills; to ‘the warm heart of Nepal’. Here we join Nepal’s one arterial highway and reach The Trisuli Centre, which is in fact a cluster of cottages that once huddled despondently between road and river. For some three years now it has been developed to address the challenge of demonstrating that road-side villages all over Nepal by definition, need not be ugly and uncared for and lacking in all inspiration or opportunity.  The challenge has been to introduce a sea-change in prospects benefiting the village, to set an example to others and to state that ugliness is no symbol of success, but quite the reverse.  Here too is ‘The Big Fig’, a huge spreading Banyan tree of great aerial roots and also there is an avoidable experience of crossing a typically long and hairy Nepali trail bridge. And so up to wonderful Bandipur with its eagle’s nest location, its provincial  architecture, its lazy walks through idyllic farms and its serried ranks of green hills descending down through orange groves to the plains and to the Ganges. And its people pleased to see you perhaps on account of a rediscovered pride in their past and in a new-found sense of their unique history. (BLD)

DAY 5 - Bandipur – Begnas Lake (O/N Begnas Lake Resort). Morning walking tour of Bandipur and free time. 
Mid-afternoon departure for Begnas Lake Resort. 

Bandipur owes its historic credentials to trade, a chapter in its history that tells of the traditional cast of enterprising middle-men, the Newars, who came here from Bhaktapur in the 1700s to create a thriving entrepot where trans-Himalayan trails meet. Here were traded the produce of colonial India and free Tibet, (mainly light Benares silks north with heavy brocaded silk south).

The warehouses were filled too with cottons and salt and rice and tobacco, and later with simple manufactured goods like lanterns, mirrors and matches, and torches and the ubiquitous